The Untold Secrets of the Drug Companies on Diabetes Medication
29th May 2009, 08:02 am
Diabetes drug medication is a multi-billion dollar business and many diabetes sufferers have wondered out loud if the drug companies are pushing for management rather than a cure, as the former is cash cow while the latter would eradicate the existing cash cow. There are many other secrets that drug companies have chosen not to divulge, for fear of loss of income, prosecution and condemnation. But the current practice is in the research for medication and not for a cure and the following are some other secrets that the world has only recently come out.
One of the dirty little secrets is that the American drug industry sells the same products in Canada and Europe and the profits are made through the rebates. The market prices for patented drugs in twenty-five other top industrialized nations were 35% to 55% lower than in the United States. Americans spend twice as much for healthcare as Canadians, Japanese or Europeans even with the same amount of care received according to a study conducted by the World Health Organization. This is on top of the costs of medication, with holders of a Medicare discount card paying a $1,299 per year for a drug compared to the same drug purchased by the Department of Veterans Affairs at a measly $322.
This existing system is the best one in favor of the drug companies, as they are free to charge as much to the medicating public. Even the Congressional Budget Office, after conducting a comparative study of patented drugs in twenty other industrialized nations were on the average 35% to 55% lower than the selling price right in the United States. An even glaring result of a study conducted by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen found that favored clients paid only half the retail price of drugs while the other 67 million Americans who are without insurance and thus cannot avail of the rebates scheme pay double the price of medications bought.
How does this scheme affect diabetics in general? There is a tremendous effect as diabetes medication is one of the most expensive maintenance medical conditions, trailing just cancer and heart disease in over-all expenditures. If the current system in general makes for marketing drugs and not finding a cure, if the cost of medication is nearly double than the actual price, and if the rewards of rebates fall only on this favoured customers and not a single person with diabetes medication bills, then the condition is not only exacerbated by the daily travails of blood sugar control, the individual’s misery is compounded all the more. The key ingredient in medication for diabetes is regulation of an existing condition, and if the medication is costlier, then the maintenance cost for diabetes medication would continue to be prohibitive, leading to more individuals unable to have the proper care leading to major complications for the diabetic.
And it gets worse each time because of the system of patents on particular protocols and medicine. One of the biggest reasons for the increased cost of medication is the goal of the drug company to recoup its research, development and marketing costs for a particular drug before the lapse of the term of the patent. This puts a strain on both the insured individual and the uninsured individual. As health insurance decreases with the current global financial turmoil, the cost of medication is passed on to the individual user. This in turn makes treatment by medication much more of a burden overall for the individual.
And the end result would be either a lessening of the prescribed dosage or an altogether removal of the drug from the daily regimen. This is further compounded by unfilled prescriptions issued to the sick individual, but since there is no money to purchase the drug regimen, there is a conclusion that the drug has become ineffective. This precipitates the cycle of the drug company then reinvesting in the research and development on the supposed improvement of an existing drug protocol, and then recouping their costs to be shouldered by the individual unable to afford then. This is a very real situation to many diabetes sufferers as the costs of drugs increase, the cost for the maintenance also becomes prohibitive.
Thus the biggest and dirtiest secret of drug companies for diabetes medication is its continued preference to improve existing drug protocols instead of finding new innovations that can lead to a cure. It has been found by studies conducted by the National Institutes of Health that a great majority of so-called new drugs are not exactly new but merely are variations of drugs already available in the market. This is a result of the business goals of drug companies to get a piece of the action. The Kaiser Permanente Medical Group’s associate executive director Dr Sharon Levine succinctly puts it as “if a drug company can change a molecule in an existing drug protocol to be able to get twenty years of patent rights and have doctors recommend the new drug, then it would lesser expense as a company to choose this rather than spending money on new research that has a certainly less probability for profits.”
As can be seen by experts on drug companies and doctors themselves, the current system in the United States is not for the altruistic ends of finding a cure and ending the suffering of many individuals suffering from chronic debilitating diseases. Instead, the cash cow mentality permeates throughout the drug industry, from its manufacturing to its retail. In 2002, quoting the statistics on the pharmaceutical industry IMS Health, the estimated total worldwide sales for prescription drugs was $400 billion revenue behemoth. Half of that comes from revenues generated in the United States. And with this is the revenue generated from the sales of diabetes medication, which is overpriced and a rehash of old medications. The sad thing about these unearthed dirty little secrets, there seems to be no move of the pharmaceutical industry to change its ways and this would impact the single diabetic individual by compounding an already debilitating condition with a medical bill that is not worth the medication being taken.